Jason Aaron, writer of the acclaimed series "Scalped" and "The Other Side," gives some love to everyone's favorite comic book gangsta rap super group, Gangsta Rap Posse, over on his blog. Check it out here. We give love right back at you, Jason. If you haven't checked out Aaron's book "Scalped," you must run over to your local comic shop and pick up as many currently available trades and/or floppies. It's a brutally awesome comic, the best book currently being published monthly and proof that Vertigo really hasn't gone all that soft.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Tucker Stone, the immortal online critic of comics and other artifacts of popular culture, and I discuss (among other things) the first two issues of one of the more mind-boggling comics out right now, Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal over at Tucker's blog, The Factual Opinion. You can check out here. It's pretty lengthy.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

I wrote a little something for VICE about Frank Frazetta, which is pretty much an expansion on my own blog post about the great man. Check it out here. Johnny Ryan wrote something as well, check it out. And so did Nicholas Gazin here.

For the Madlib Medicine Show #5, The History of the Loop Digga, I did a comic about a fiction 90s rapper called Rapper X for the CD booklet. It's a tale of love, racism, police brutality and revenge. Check out the entry at Stones Throw's website here.

I was introduced to Frank Frazetta's work through a couple of paperback art books collecting images of his paintings that my friend's family owned. I was in 5th or 6th grade and looking at those pictures brought about an unidentifiable sense of euphoria. His renderings of flesh, metal and marble seemed impossible to have achieved and yet there was the evidence, before my eyes, these materials illustrated perfectly. But it was not just the illusion of surface, it was his conveying of weight and gravity in his figures, their sublime gesturing, swords parrying, languidly laying, voluptuous women. Everything. The imagination on display, his paintings were windows to fully realized worlds we knew existed somewhere, but had never seen before.

I rediscovered Frazetta's work in college while studying illustration. A professor of mine, lecturing on science-fiction and fantasy illustration said "You publish a blank book with a Frazetta cover and it would sell." I have no doubt.

After college I began to take art creation very seriously as a sacred act. I was young. I dismissed all illustration, but in the back of my mind I still coveted being able to draw and paint not only like Frazetta, but also draw and paint his subject matter: warriors, women, monsters, etc. Eventually I shed my narrow outlook and let comics and fantasy illustration back into my heart. It never had left really.

It's a sad day to learn of Frank Frazetta's passing. He has meant so much to burgeoning artists of all disciplines, his technique and genres are vehicles for feelings of excitement and passion and the limitlessness of imagination. I truly believe he will always be remembered as a true American visionary. He will always be alive in the vast scope of his artistic influence and in the souls of everyone his pictures touched, which I believe is anyone who has seen them. I read in an essay bemoaning the fact that Frazetta's work was not included among the greats in museums. But I believe the temple that keeps and respects his legacy is safe within the hearts those who will always revere him and his genius. Frazetta's emotional content is like the earth and cosmos, base level, and have no need for shelter in the sometimes cold and blind hallways of self-important institutions.

Thank you, Frank Frazetta, for what you shared with us, what you gave to the world.